


straightforward

by angularmomentum



Series: #dirtbags [5]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic), Hockey RPF
Genre: Brunch, Excessive Drinking, M/M, Multi, Revenge, centipedes, sad bullriding, the gay ihop, the vodka circle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-04
Updated: 2017-07-04
Packaged: 2018-11-23 11:54:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11401896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angularmomentum/pseuds/angularmomentum
Summary: revenge is a dish best served stupidor: the NHL has kent parson's back





	straightforward

**Author's Note:**

> for the assholes. happy america day!
> 
> warnings for bad pranks, and a lot of maligning of jack zimmermann, so turn back if it's not your thing

-

Philly

-

Claude has never had to do that thing where he looks at his phone screen in total bafflement before, but there’s a first time for everything.

“Hello?” he answers, sure he’s about to be told someone has died, or that news of his ability to tie a cherry stem into a knot with his tongue has made it to Washington and Ovechkin won’t go to sleep until Claude sends a video.

“We need to talk,” Backstrom tells him, about as readable as a Chinese Ikea manual. “About Parson,” he amends, when Claude makes an incredulous noise.

“What?”

“How quickly can you get to Washington?” Backy asks.

Claude often feels a bit like he’s somehow falling behind around Nicklas, but that’s pretty normal as far as he can tell. He has that effect on people. Wayne and Shane have both confirmed it, as well as several former Capitals, but in this instance Claude feels like he’s being expected to step up somehow and literally can’t find the stairs. “I— what?”

Backstrom hangs up. Claude’s phone vibrates, and there on the message notification is a picture of Kent asleep on a sofa with two German Shepherds on his legs, wearing what looks like a Tre Kronor t-shirt and bright red bike shorts.

“What?” Claude whispers gently at his phone, even though Backstrom is very much no longer on the line.

 _We can also put him in a cab but he has to be back in Vegas in two days_ says the subsequent text, which Claude knows objectively can’t be in direct response to his question, but can’t help being creeped out by anyway.

_Why is he on your couch?_

_We have painkillers, you don’t need to bring anything,_ Backy says, dropping Claude a pin for their house.

Claude sighs and grabs his car keys. Then, on second thought, he whistles for the dogs. He might as well bring reinforcements.

-

Washington DC

-

Kent is drunk. He might be on his way to very drunk, but his ability to tell has been somewhat blunted by the alcohol he’s been ingesting at a rate of knots.

He likes to think, in general, that he’s got a reasonable tolerance for drink, given the many years of practice he’s had at learning where his limits are, but there’s something to be said for the destructive force of discovering your ex-boyfriend’s secret Instagram and finding it full of pictures of someone who looks a lot like you but isn’t.

It really isn’t great to have to lean back over your teammates and be expected to captain the fuck up, especially when the guy showing you your ex-boyfriend’s secret Instagram is your alternate, who seems to have kind of failed the basic emotional sensitivity course for painful breakups.

Kent sort of vaguely remembers saying “Jeff, what the fuck?” before gearing up, but after that the whole thing is kind of a blur.

Between getting smushed into the boards by Backy and cheerfully slapped on the ass by Ovechkin Kent is feeling very bruised, and very alone in the two day window before they head back to Vegas.

He has a slightly sharper memory of waving everyone off after the reporters have cleared out, and he definitely remembers trying to explain the loss without explaining anything at all, because it takes a surprising amount of doublethink to be able to simultaneously be screaming internally and saying “we just couldn’t get into the crease as deep as we wanted to tonight, just, uh…. couldn’t find our depth and rhythm,” five different ways.

He thinks briefly about calling Claude, and then reminds himself that misery does not love company, and decides to just send him a snapchat of his dick instead.

Anyway this bar is in Virginia, which should be a crime, but somehow isn’t. It has the kind of dingy vibe that takes a long time to create and is too new for it not to be deliberate, but it also has an ironic mechanical bull, posters of baseball players on the walls, and cheap margaritas on Mondays.

The bartender hands him another one, and the song changes to something that’s not country but is trying to be. There’s a lot of intense banjo. Kent gulps a big mouthful of frozen alcoholic slush and puts his elbow right in a sticky, wet patch on the bar. He can’t be bothered to move it, so fuck it.

“Rough night?” the bartender doesn’t seem interested, but it’s a Monday. She’s probably bored.

“Do you ever feel like you’re the older model of a car nobody ever wanted in the first place? Like a— a Honda Accord? Or a Ford Focus?”

“Uh. No.” She stares at him. “Hey, do I… know you from somewhere?”

“Unless you’re in Las Vegas a lot I doubt it,” he mumbles. “Do you have crazy straws?”

She shakes her head but hands him a little cocktail umbrella in rainbow colours. “On the house.”

Kent knocks back the rest of it and sticks the umbrella behind his ear. “Fill ‘er up, barkeep.”

“Please never say that again.” She hands him a new margarita. “That guy over there said to give you this.”

Kent blearily focuses on the guy standing near the mechanical bull, who is tall enough to look big even from a distance, and kind of reminds Kent of Burky, if Burky put on like forty pounds. Burky’s nice. Kent likes Burky.

Kent gives him a thumbs up, because why not.

It’s possible that Kent might have had a little bit too much, because he’s certain the floor isn’t meant to tilt like that, but hey, fuck it. He ambles over, and wow, the guy is really big. He probably even has a name, which Kent immediately does not remember.

After that the whole night is the kind of smudge-effect whiteout which results in saying “Oh yeah, I don’t remember the summer of oh-three too well” with a nostalgic glimmer.

Kent thinks maybe he’s enjoying himself, sort of.

That is, until he wakes up on Backstrom’s couch wearing a t-shirt that smells like Old Spice, staring up the nose of a truly enormous dog.

Said dog licks him, which does nothing but add to Kent’s confusion, because the dog’s breath smells like toothpaste.

-

The bar is very loud, for a Monday. Alex immediately decides he likes the music, but the real winner is the mechanical bull, which is new since last time he came here. Good thing he recognised the baseball players in order of how good their butts were in their posters, or he might never have found Parson at all, and then he’d be in a ditch somewhere instead of brazenly making out with a guy in a polo shirt leaning up against the back of a booth.

“Hello, tiny Parson,” Alex says, sitting down opposite them. “Hello, tiny Parson’s friend.”

“What the fuck?” the guy whispers, surfacing from the kiss with impressive beard burn. “Are you— Alex Ovechkin?”

“I am twin. I’m taking Parson home now, okay?”

Parson makes a grabby-hands gesture at the collar of his friend’s shirt and almost connects. It is marginally impressive, considering that since Alex opened the snapchat of Kent riding the mechanical bull shirtless with margarita salt on his lips and trying to sing along to a fiddle track he seems to have somehow gotten drunker.

“Uh—” The guy is making a solid effort at speech, which Alex appreciates, but judging by the way Parson is red and blotchy but also kind of a little bit green, he thinks he might have a time limit before alcohol poisoning really sets in. Americans. They spend so long preventing each other from drinking that when they do their livers are tiny and weak and can only deal with that sad, evil dog piss they call “beer.”

“Come on, Parson,” Alex says, extricating him with what he considers to be reasonable delicacy. “Time for going home. Tomorrow we feed you good Russian breakfast.”

“I don’t wanna eat your dick,” Parson mumbles. “No means no.”

Alex laughs, slinging Kent’s arm over his shoulders and picking him up. He really is tiny, like a teenager. Whoever writes the Aces stats pages is a liar, because if Parson is 180cm Alex will drink a Coors Light. “It’s okay Parson,” Alex says, shouldering out of the sparse Monday crowd. “Backy has ring on it.”

“Kinky,” Parson mumbles, before he passes out against Alex’s chest.

-

Claude gets to Washington in two hours and forty minutes, which he considers to be a restrained and responsible amount of time considering he’s jittery enough that he thinks he could have made it in two and ten if he’d really put his mind to it.

Backstrom answers the door wearing a pair of sweatpants hacked off at the knee and an excruciating bandana in exactly the wrong shade of pink for the yellow SWEDEN shirt he’s swimming in.

“Gah,” Claude says, out of reflexive fear. One of the dogs noses past his legs and stuffs his snout in Backstrom’s crotch, little brown paws braced cheerfully on his huge knees. Backstrom smiles and bends down to pat him.

“Good timing,” Backstrom says. “Alex is making breakfast.”

“Yeah, uh, about that.” Claude’s mouth is slowly regaining moisture the longer nobody dies. “Why the hell is Kipper in your house. Didn’t you try to kill him last year?”

“Americans,” Backstrom mutters, straightening up. “They’re very dramatic.”

“You live with _Alex Ovechkin._ ”

“Russians too,” Backy allows, serenely. “Do you want bacon or not?”

Claude kind of does want bacon, and a better coffee than the one he got at a drive through halfway down the I-95 in Baltimore. “I want to see Kent.”

Backy grins at him. Claude tries not to show that he is experiencing a moment of mortal terror.

“Clode!” Ovechkin yells from inside the house, doing an impressive job of butchering Claude’s name. “Come inside, Backy, you scare him.”

Claude knows from bitter experience that trying to move Backstrom when he does not want to be moved is much like colliding with a very soft brick wall, so he has to wait for Backy to roll his eyes and step aside before he can go find Ovi, who is, on balance, the friendlier of the two of them. Once upon a time Claude might have thought Ovechkin was intimidating, but in the intervening years he has been to enough All-Star games to realise that the carpet very much matches the drapes in the sense that he’s more or less sincere in every way. If Ovechkin were party to a nefarious plan, he’d tell everyone about it, then laugh when he pulled it off anyway.

He finds him in the kitchen wearing a pair of bedazzled underpants and a variety of gold necklaces. He’s brandishing a spatula and throwing meat at what looks like a pack of hounds who are excitedly wiggling around his legs. Claude’s dogs immediately join the fray, looking like nothing so much as excitable footstools in comparison.

Claude will never understand Europeans.

Kent is sitting hunched at the kitchen table, both hands over his ears. “Stop yelling,” he moans. “For the love of god, stop yelling.”

“Did you snapchat me a picture of your dick last night?” Claude asks, powerfully relieved.

“I don’t know,” Kent snaps. “I might have.”

“You look like shit.”

“What are you doing here?”

“How was that not your first question?” Claude takes Kent’s untouched coffee and sips it gratefully.

Kent buries his face in his folded arms and moans.

“See, first, when I’m get Snapchat I think it’s just so Backy can send me naked selfies,” Ovechkin says, joining them at the table with a huge mound of food. Kent makes a truly pitiful sound in response, recoiling from the bacon. “Then I think it’s funny I always getting so much video. Good thing, right Parson?”

“Why are you doing this,” Kent asks. “I didn’t ask for this. You could have let me die with dignity.”

“You puked in my car,” Backy says, leaning in the doorway and surveying the mess. “Twice.”

“Sorry, should have taken mine,” Ovi says, unrepentantly chewing on some toast with a fried egg on it. “I’ll take it for clean.”

“Send me… bill,” Parse says, very quietly. “Sorry.”

There’s a moment of awkward silence as Backstrom and Ovechkin look at each other over Kent’s pathetic head and Claude feels like he’s missing something. Backstrom twitches an eyebrow and Ovechkin grimaces, shrugging.

Claude clears his throat. “Kipper. What happened?” Parse peeks an eye out from where he’s hiding and Claude’s heart does something uncomfortable. Maybe the coffee is too acidic the way Europeans make it or maybe it’s the way Kent’s stupid hair is sticking up in all directions and his eye is too red-rimmed for hangover alone but either way, Claude feels bad. Kind of nauseous, but in an emotional way. “I didn’t think you were such a sore loser.”

Kent laughs pitifully, looking at Ovechkin. “Oh right, we lost.”

“Do you want to come to Philly?” Claude blurts. “We can get waffles at the gay IHOP.”

“Don’t tempt me with the gayHOP unless you want me to puke in your car too.” Kent sighs and makes a gesture somewhat in the direction of his stolen coffee, so Claude dumps some cream in it and hands it back. “Jack has a new boyfriend. He looks like— whatever, it’s fine. Does anyone know where my wallet went?”

Backstrom produces it from a cavernous pocket and puts it on the table as he sits down. “I don’t have your keys. We called the bar.”

“Great.” Kent stirs his coffee with his finger. Claude does his best not to give him shit about it. “Can someone just… put me on the next flight? Whenever it is, it doesn’t matter. I can call the locksmith. My passport’s at the hotel. Shit. You know what? Just send me to the pit, I’m sure the mole people play hockey.”

“Take sick day,” Ovechkin says, pushing a plate his way. “Go with orange boyfriend.”

“I’m not his—”

“He’s not my—”

Backstrom and Ovechkin burst out laughing.

“He’s my best friend!” Kent yells, then covers his mouth with a shaking hand. He turns an uncomfortable shade of parchment ivory and flees the kitchen, leaving Claude to deal with the European comedy section.

“Not boyfriend,” Ovechkin chuckles. “I guess, you and Crosby? But no, Crosby only like to win, and also is terrible. So, maybe not boyfriend, okay. You’re still taking him home?”

“Why do you even care?” Claude has been holding perplexity in abeyance in the face of Kent’s very evident misery, but honestly, sitting in Backstrom’s monstrously white kitchen picking Kent up off his couch is not how he really expected to spend the Tuesday morning of his bye week. “He didn’t call his team?”

“He didn’t call anybody,” Backstrom points out. “He sent Ovi a snapchat of himself riding a mechanical bull shirtless.”

Claude is briefly paralysed by that mental image. “So you… went to get him?”

“Yes.” Ovechkin says this like it is very obvious, and Claude is very stupid, a tone he usually associates only with Backstrom’s uniquely Swedish disdain. “You want we leave him there? Biting some guy neck like little vampire?”

Claude does his best not to picture it and fails. The interior version of Kent in his mind’s eye is wearing glittery body paint which he has never, to Claude’s knowledge, actually worn. “No, but—”

“Maybe we like him,” Backstrom says, examining his own fingernails. “Has anyone ever told you living well is the best revenge?”

“No? What?”

Backstrom sticks a fingernail in his mouth and very delicately bites off the corner of it, which should not be frightening, but somehow is. “It’s bullshit.”

“He’s been help out with charities for years,” Ovi says, finishing the bacon, to Backstrom’s hiss of outrage. “He’s good guy.”

Nobody really has to tell Claude that. “Yeah, he’s okay.”

“Good, then we’re on the same page,” Nicky says, fixing Claude with a penetrating stare. “When is the next time you play the Falconers?”

-

Philly

-

The ride up to Philadelphia consists mostly of being asleep, for which Kent is eternally grateful.

He doesn’t really want to look at Claude, or listen to him talking back to the French radio he gets on some weird in-car app. He doesn’t want to think about leaving his team in the lurch and making Jeff cover for him with management, or what it means that he’s on personal leave with Claude on the East Coast. Most of all, he does not want to think about being bridal-carried out of a bar by Alex Ovechkin, longtime professional acquaintance, sometime on-ice enemy and full-time Russian live-in boyfriend to the most terrifying man in the NHL. Kent has come to accept that Backy might not be 100% evil, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t remember the Burakovsky Incident.

“Wake up,” Claude says, poking him gently in the ribs. “We’re at IHOP.”

Kent thinks it looks like any other IHOP ever, but for some reason its proximity to the part of Philly he likes best gives it an entirely undeserved patina of welcome. He’s spent plenty of enjoyable mornings-after here.

He’s wearing the clothes he went out in and they still smell like dog and Backstrom’s Swedish detergent, and he has no keys and has turned his phone completely off. “Is Twitter on fire yet?” he manages, cutting across the interior to one of the identical booths.

“Nah,” Claude drawls, laminated menu making that weird wobbly sound in his hands. “Your guy didn’t post anything.” He glances down with a big sigh. “So I’m your best friend, huh?”

“Shut up.”

“Besties forever?”

“I hate you.”

“That’s nice. Want to have a sleepover?”

Kent throws the entire cup of sugar packets at him.

“Wanna talk about it?” Claude asks, in a manner usually reserved for getting speeding tickets and vet bills. Still, he’s asking, which is something. And he drove all the way to DC, which Kent still can’t really believe, but here he is, in Philadelphia, trying to eat waffles at the gay IHOP, Claude’s knees bumping his under the table.

Kent leans on his hands, dropping his fork in a pool of fake syrup. “I just didn’t think it would be like this,” he admits, thinking about the pictures. Zimms at the beach with a tiny blonde guy on his shoulders. Zimms in a kitchen wearing an apron that’s too small for him, covered in flour. Pictures of an apartment that has little signs of home in it. It hurts, and that’s probably more than just his headache. “It’s whatever,” he decides. “Fuck him, right? Is a sleepover still on the table? I’ll braid your hair.”

“I want pigtails,” Claude says, stealing a waffle right off his plate.

Kent laughs, and it feels okay.

-

Claude sends Kent back to Vegas on the Thursday morning flight with a bag full of borrowed clothes and a booklet on responsible drinking he was given when he first signed with a team tucked into the side corner.

Kent texts him a picture from the airport with it in the trash and a middle finger in the foreground, so Claude is at least reasonably assured he’s back to his normal self.

Part Two of the plan is slightly more complicated.

“Privyet!” Mashkov booms.

“You have caller ID,” Claude points out. “You know I don’t speak Russian.”

“Okay, mister ‘allo. Why you’re calling me?”

Claude does his very best to sound threatening. “I’m calling in that favour.”

“…No.”

“Yes.”

“No!”

“Mashkov. We agreed. I will never post that video of you saying how much you hate dogs in exchange for one favour, to be called in at any time.”

“I thought you forget,” Mashkov grumbles. “How could you? Babushka tells me wolves will eat me in the forest, better to stay in Moscow, and you think I can like dogs, after? They wolves, even if small wolves!”

Claude looks at his dogs: one of them is currently sacked out on the living room rug with all his paws in the air, making little whimpering sounds as he chases something in a dream. He looks about as threatening to a man of Mashkov’s size as a cotton ball. The other one is chewing his own tail.

“Uh Huh. I’m going to need to get into the guest lockers next time you’re in Philly,” Claude tells him. “You don’t need to know why.”

“G, I don’t know—”

“Nobody will be injured,” Claude promises. “You won’t even know I’ve been there.”

Mashkov grumbles something in Russian, but he agrees, as Claude knew he would. Nobody as concerned with their social media as Alexei could stand to lose that many followers.

-

It takes some doing, but Claude manages to sneak in to the visitors’ gear room undetected. Maybe this is cruel, when Claude knows they have home ice advantage anyway, but this isn’t about winning, though that might also be nice at some point. No, this is fair payback for something longer standing than Claude is party to, but hell, it’s _Kent._

“I’m lookout,” Mashkov says, mournfully. “This way I’m have—” he snaps his fingers. “When you can’t be rat.”

“I think you’re already the rat, Tater.”

“Nobody will know,” he mutters. “I’m deniable.”

“Deniability?”

Mashkov huffs dejectedly. “You finish yet? I’m not so happy with pranks on my team.” He pauses, looking over his shoulder before he remembers he’s not supposed to be witnessing Claude’s misdeeds and turns back, a red flush creeping up the back of his neck. “Only we’re doing pranks for each other. One time I’m putting pictures of Snowy when he is baby and wearing Donald Duck in everybody’s locker, that is good time. What you’re doing, why it’s take so long?”

“It’s not a prank.” Claude pauses, shoulder deep in Zimmermann’s bag. “It’s payback.”

“That is worse!”

Claude replaces the last mouthguard and zips it closed. “Okay, I’m done, let me out. Remember Mashkov, you breathe a single word about this and I’ll make sure the world knows you’re a dog-hating monster.”

“You’re promise me nobody is getting hurt?”

Claude thinks of Kent, almost falling asleep in his plate of waffles. He doesn’t think that’s what Mashkov means. “Yes. I promise.”

“Swear on Canada.”

“Fine, I swear on Canada,” Claude says. “Good luck tonight.”

Tater glares at him, big, sad brown eyes beseeching. “You’re jinx us now?”

“Break a leg, then, whatever.”

Claude makes sure the door is shut behind him when he flees back down the hall, ignoring Mashkov’s moan of superstitious outrage.

-

“Well, we have some shenanigans out here tonight Bob.”

“Tell us about it, Jeff!”

“I don’t know quite what’s going on, but it does seem like Falconers forward _Jack Zimmermann_ has gone out with some unusual gear here, Bob. Looks like the Aces black, from where I’m sitting.”

“He didn’t have any spare gear, Jeff?”

“Well, you know how superstitious hockey players can be Bob.”

“That’s not an answer, Jeff!”

“It’s a mystery, Bob! But all that Aces tape on his sticks sure seems to have knocked him sideways, he’s playing like the rink is haunted. Is that… A few words from Flyers captain _Claude Giroux,_ Zimmermann seems to be— well, they’re not fighting, Bob, but Giroux sure seems pleased with himself.”

“Wonder if he called him a pigeon, Jeff.”

“Well Bob, I hope he’s branched out a little since then. Maybe a Loon!”

“We’d sure pay to hear that noise, huh Jeff?”

“Sure would Bob.”

“Oh, what’s— well Jeff, looks like we’ve got some kind of casual Friday going down tonight. Zimmermann’s just taken out his mouthguard, and—”

“That’s a whole mouth full of black, it sure is. Reminds me of college, Bob.”

“Something you want to share with our audience, Jeff?”

“Let’s just hope it isn’t boot polish, Bob. That stuff tastes like regrets.”

-

Pittsburgh

-

Kent has never been one to subscribe to conspiracy theories, but some weird shit is going down in the league, and Kent thinks Claude is on it.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Sidney says, next time they play the Pens. “Don’t talk to me while we’re playing, what the hell?”

“Don’t be an asshole,” Kent snaps, even though that one was a lost cause years ago. “Why is everyone fucking with Jack?”

Sidney begins to look distinctly shifty the longer Kent has a grip on his jersey. “Ask your boyfriend,” Sid snarls, or tries to. It mostly comes out garbled because of his mouthguard. “He’s not really my cousin, okay? I don’t know why everyone keeps saying that. I don’t know anything.”

Kent restrains himself from punching him just for the sake of it, reminding himself of all the times Sid has sucked his cock and vice-versa. It’s probably rude to put that aside for the sake of frustration. “He’s not my boy—” he starts, but Sid is skating away, and Kent should probably play some hockey at some point.

-

Philly

-

Andre’s first ever hockey fight has eight thousand hits on youtube within an hour, which is pretty good considering it’s _Andre,_ known to most as that kid who got in the wrong car once because he thought it was an Uber, and not Andre Burakovsky: enforcer.

Kent watches half of it before he FaceTimes him, regardless of the time difference. “Burky, what the hell?”

Burky grins at him, blue light throwing a shadow over the bruise on his jaw. “Pretty cool, man,” he says. “You should see the other guy.”

“Doesn’t your wicked stepfather have like, a rule? No fighting on the playground?”

Burky frowns at him, and Kent immediately feels terrible. Andre might be huge but he’s also adorable, a problem Kent has dealt with before in a truly irresponsible fashion. “Nicke is good at fighting,” Burky says, loyally.

Kent thinks that is something of an overstatement. “No, that’s his Mr. Hyde. Come on, dude. What’s going on? First the dye and the Aces stickers all over his helmet, then fucking— why the hell did Auston trip him? And you tried to fight him! He’s six-four!”

“What’s that in metres?” Andre asks serenely.

“It doesn’t matter!”

Andre blinks at him. “Jeez Parse, come on. We all know.”

The bottom drops abruptly out of Kent’s stomach. “Know _what_?”

Andre adjusts the phone so Kent can see up his nostrils. “Hey, remember that time I found a stray cat and didn’t know what to do, so I called you from Sweden when it was three AM in Las Vegas?”

“What does that have to do with Ja—”

“You picked up, man,” Andre’s nose says.

“Well, yeah, but…” Kent trails off. “Anyone would have. I don’t even know why you called me.”

Andre moves the phone again, this time so the camera is on his right nipple. “Kent. Not everybody. You know that.”

“Your right nipple can fuck off,” Kent mumbles, hot all over suddenly, but not in a sexy way at all.

“He’s offended by that.” Andre draws an invisible frown under it with his finger before he moves the camera back to his face. “Seriously though. You think nobody notices that?”

Kent has a powerful urge to hang up. “Is Claude behind this?”

Andre looks immediately shifty. “I have no idea. Who’s Claude? I don’t know him.”

“I’m going to kill him,” Kent warns him. “Tell everyone to stop.”

“Uh—”

“I mean it!”

“My nipple has to go,” Andre says. “We left the oven on.”

“You can’t even cook!” Kent yells, but Andre has already hung up.

-

Providence

-

Kent very rarely gives speeches, because he’s bad at them, but needs fucking must.

“Listen up!” he tells the team next time they’re in Providence. He’s standing on a bag, because he somehow feels the need to be taller. There has been a distinct upswing in conspiratorial looks between his teammates, who are unsubtle people at the best of times, so he wants to see who exactly is in cahoots from a height. “Some _weird shit_ has been going down. You assholes thought I wouldn’t know? I’m— frankly, I’m offended.”

“That’s very motivational, Parse,” Jeff says, smirking knowingly. “What’s nesting in your jock?”

“Okay _first of all_ that is too specific a question not to make me worry about you, and secondly, I am only going to say this one time: if any of you lay a finger on Jack Zimmermann tonight, I will make sure you run so hard at practice you puke. Don’t test me.”

Jeff goes pale.

Kent points at him. “J’accuse, man. Spit it out, what’s the plan?”

“Look,” Jeff says, pleadingly, “it’s not like he’ll get hurt. It’s just, we know you and him— and he’s in the show now, so like, we know you never talk about it, but—”

“Because it’s _none of your business._ ” Kent wonders if this is what an aneurism feels like. Probably not, but the clamminess of his palms is worrying, as is the look on Jeff’s face, backed by the stony spread of his stupid, stupid team, who are clearly not going to rat on one of their own. On some level, it’s comforting to know they have his back like this, but on another, this is deeply disproportionate retaliation for Jack’s existence. “I know Claude put you up to this, and believe me, the next time he picks up his phone I am going to make sure he knows he’s a dead man walking.”

“What? Claude?” Jeff blinks. “No, Andre said—”

“Swoops, Jesus,” Markus says, “the pact!”

Kent does not yell. Kent takes a very deep breath. “What pact? Are you the Illunimati now?”

Their newest rookie leans into Jeff, eyes wide with confusion. “The what?”

Jeff squares his shoulders. “Okay, so, the thing is, right, is that we don’t hate you.”

“Thanks!” Kent shrieks, “that’s so good to hear!”

“He’s high pitched when he’s angry,” Markus whispers, loudly.

“Kent, bud, what happened last year during the off season when I was golfing in Scotland?” Jeff asks, folding his massive arms.

Kent suddenly regrets standing in the middle of the room. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Answer the question, dude.”

The sea of eyes he’s facing begins to feel a lot less like a room full of penitent delinquents and lot more like the jury in a courtroom. Kent wonders if this is what defendants feel like. I’m sorry your honour, I was dead at the time. “You were away and I was just hanging around. It was no big deal.” In fact, at the time Kent had been filming a video of Kit Purrson headbutting Claude in the throat, making him choke on his beer. “I wasn’t busy.”

“You drove Clara to the hospital and witnessed the birth of my first child, Kent.” Jeff squares up. Standing, he’s as tall as Kent on his ersatz podium. “And you filmed it for me.”

“Clara would have crushed my hand otherwise,” Kent mutters. “She told me to.”

“My buddy has a centipede colony,” Jeff says, right in his face, “and I borrowed some. You’re like, six hours too late.”

-

Philly

-

Claude opens the door with both dogs barking excitedly on his heels. They’re not making the “Intruder! Mailman! Stray Cat!” noise, so Claude is less suspicious than he ordinarily would be of interruptions to re-runs of Real Housewives, but it’s still unexpected.

Kent is standing on his stoop like fucking Batman, dressed in Aces black and dusted with snow across the shoulders. “Do you have _any idea,_ ” Kent hisses, “how long it takes to drive to fucking Philadelphia from _Providence?_ ”

“About five hours,” Claude answers immediately. “We don’t fly, we just take the—”

“It was,” Kent bites out, “a rhetorical question.”

Claude looks at him, then at his watch. It is pretty much the middle of the night, and Kent must have come straight from the game. “Wanna come in?”

“I want to roast you over an open fire,” Kent says.

“You need an extra person for that,” Claude points out. There’s a pause as Kent just looks at him, a world of judgement in his eyes. “What was I supposed to do, Kipper?” Claude asks. “Tell Backy no?”

Kent blinks. “Say that again?”

“I think maybe it counts as not my fault it got a little out of hand if Backy started it,” Claude says. “Sorry about the centipedes, though. Wasn’t my idea.”

“They had to call the exterminator,” Kent reminds him. “Jack was furious.”

“He called you?”

Kent laughs, small at first, then louder, until he’s braced against Claude’s doorway, wheezing, tears leaking out the corners of his eyes. “Oh my god. Backy.” He gasps. “Here. Read for yourself. If you can, that is. I know you struggle with English sometimes, and…” He fishes his phone out of his pocket and hands it to Claude, still chuckling, “and whatever. Read it.”

Claude keys in his code and looks at Kent’s most recent texts.

The number isn’t saved, and the first message is just a picture of a bunch of naked and half-naked guys standing in their stalls, floor occupied by six tiny black streaks. _Stop it_ the text says. _I got enough hazing in college._

“Obviously not,” Claude mutters.

“You dyed his teeth black,” Kent says, taking it back and scrolling down. The next picture is just the back of someone’s neck, a centipede more evident in the frame. _Please,_ is the only caption, and then Kent starts laughing again. This time Claude can’t help but join in. It’s too infectious, and it’s been too long since Claude heard it. He drags him into the house, because he’s letting all the heat out, and Claude is wearing sweatpants and nothing else.

Kent leans back against the door as it shuts, sliding down it until he’s folded up with his knees under his elbows, looking up at Claude through his snow-damp hair. “Can you call off the mob now? You’ve made your point.”

“Have I?” Claude sits down opposite him, resting a hand, after a second, on one of his crooked elbows. “Vendetta is a blood thing.”

“I’m making sure you never watch The Godfather ever again,” Kent says. “Besides, Burky had the blood covered, I’m sure it counts when it’s someone else’s. Someone needs to teach him to fight.” He pauses, working his bottom lip between his small teeth. “What’d I do?” he asks, voice suddenly small.

Claude isn’t sure what he’s talking about. He can’t possibly be blaming himself, not after all this. It aches a little bit, in a way he never thought it would, to see him uncertain. Claude might not be his boyfriend, but he thinks he could accept that he loves him almost despite himself. Actually, even that has started to feel like a lie, lately. He just loves him. “What’dyou mean?”

“Jeff said— when I took Clara to the hospital. And Burky was all like “oh, I called you from Sweden and you answered the phone!” like that was even a big deal. I wasn’t sleeping anyway. So, uh, what did I do? Not check you that hard when I knew your hip was fucked up? Didn’t spit my gum on your porch? That one really awesome blowjob?”

Claude’s heart clenches horribly, stuck on some of the meat behind his ribs. He takes in a quick breath, trying to kick it back into rhythm. “Kip— Kent. Come on. Why does it have to be a thing? Maybe I just… maybe I just like you, is all. Maybe you’re important to me. Does there need to be a better reason?”

Kent laughs, but this time it sounds bad, forced and brittle. “So it was the blowjobs, then?”

“Yeah, it was the blowjobs,” Claude says, dragging him forward until he’s got Kent in the most awkward hug imaginable, damp and cold and interrupted by at least one cold doggy nose. “Definitely the blowjobs.”

“Can I stay the night?” Kent asks into the side of his neck.

Claude runs a hand over his back. “Yeah. Always, you know that.”

“You really are my best friend, you know,” Kent admits. “Sorry.”

“’S okay,” Claude tells him. “You’re mine too. I’ll take you to IHOP for breakfast, we’ll call it even.”

**Author's Note:**

> I await your rotten tomatoes with glee
> 
> somewhere offscreen jack zimmermann is fine


End file.
